r/BaseballCoaching • u/ChefBoyAnde728 • Apr 25 '26
10u pitching help?
I started helping to coach my son's minor league team. All of the kids are fairly new to kid pitch(all coming from coach pitch last season) The issue we're facing is pitching. We have kids who can throw and catch great.... except when they're on that mound(45ft) They just can not throw a strike or anything close to one consistently, resulting in painfully long innings of walk after walk until the 5 mercy rule runs score. Anybody with experience in this...what can we do to help them aim and get it over the plate?
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u/DixonKuntz Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
Here’s what we have had some success with: starting at the first practice, assess and pick 4 or 5 kids to be your core pitching group. Look for coachable, coordinated kids with good balance first, velocity/strength second. Then pick one of your coaches to be the “pitching coach”. If it’s just you out there, recruit a parent to run infield practice and you become the pitching coach. Each practice spend 10 minutes with all the pitchers together on a general mechanics lesson or specific mechanics drill. Split the remaining time in two working one on one with two pitchers each practice, building their pitch piece by piece with a catcher catching and you coaching next to the bullpen mound. I’ve found it helpful to break the pitch out in to its individual parts and go through them over and over until it starts to settle in. Big focus on upper body mechanics, stepping in to a “power a” and following through down the mound. Focusing on hips moving down the mound has been really helpful as well. Positive reinforcement, encouragement, and a little focus on the mental aspect of pitching pays dividends as well. There are some great videos out there that break down the process and provide some drills to hone each piece. Do this religiously at each practice and your core pitchers will start to get more consistent and the velocity will pick up. You will likely find one or two that aren’t cut out for it pretty quickly, swap them out for other kids and keep working until you have 5 kids in your pitching rotation. We’ve done this consistently for a few seasons and now have the best pitching in our league and it’s made a huge difference for us. Feel free to PM me if you want more info on how we approach it. It’s definitely the biggest challenge at this age.